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October 28, 2011

A couple of months ago, a large number of animal welfare advocates from around the country became aware, and upset, that three dogs named Dusty, Reilly and Monroe, were sentenced to death.

The dogs were among several that were rescued from an alleged dog fighting ring in Michigan, was said to have failed his behavioral evaluation and was slated to be killed.

However, the video footage of Dusty's evaluation was made public -- and, upon watching the video, it was pretty much everyone's opinion that Dusty performed admirably.

Last week, the Monroe County Judge overturned the decision toe euthanize the dogs and that the dogs do not pose a threat to public safety.

This is a huge win for the dogs, and win over failed behavior evaluations. Congrats to the folks in Michigan who fought so hard for the dogs and I"m hopeful that the Buster Foundation can get custody of the dogs soon.

Well, apparently the local prosecuter in Monroe County filed a motion this week of contempt of court against the two organizations involved in circulating the video, the Monroe SPCA and the Buster Foundation. The thinking here was that they were circulating evidence for public scrutiny that was going to be involved in the later case to try to get the kill order removed against Dusty and 2 other dogs in her same situation because of the bogus evaluation.

Yesterday, the judge ruled that the videos were already public information -- and thus, prosecuting for contempt of court would be in violation of their 1st Amendment right to distribute public information.

So the legal suite to try to save Dusty, Reilly and Monroe is still moving forward, and the rescue organizations are getting custody of a fouth dog, Razzle in Mid August.

July 26, 2011

Dusty is a red 'pit bull' type dog that was given a behavioral evaluation by Dr. Katherine Houpt. I've embedded the four minute long evaluation:

As you watch the video you'll note tht the dog happily walked in the evaluation room with the animal control officer with the lead. Then, when being stroked by the (clearly) fake hand, the dog shows clear play signals with the hand. The dog showed no aggression when the food bowl was placed in front of it and removed multiple times, and play bowed to the fake doll (and upon the doll's continued approach showed signals of avoidance). The dog jumped up on the stranger at first, but not in an aggressive manner. In a separate video, you can see the excitement with which Dusty met another dog (keeping in mind that this is a high-stimulous environment as you can clearly hear a lot of dog barking in the background.

Dr. Houpt declared Dusty aggressive and recommended killing Dusty because of his "lack of any useful purpose and public safety threat (he) poses". Threat? The dog in the video? Really?

This sure seems like an effort by someone to have the dog killed because of, possibly, perceptions based on the type of dog she is vs any actual behavioral issues.

I've talked about Temp Testing in shelters before -- and strongly believe that too many shelters are using bogus temp testing to declare too many animals "unadoptable" and killing them in the shelter. But in declaring them "unadoptable", don't count them against their kill numbers -- and there are no shortage of shelters out there that are declaring 25-30% of all of their impounds "unadopatable".

There is no rational person who would view the video above and think Dusty poses a threat. She may need to develop better manners, but threatening?

And if your shelter has a similar policy on temp testing please stop it now. Temp testing should largely be designed to give behaviorists an idea of what type of training/situations the dog needs help with to make it adoptable. In some rare situations, dogs will be too aggressive to be safely rehomed, but this will be the exception, not the norm. For the most part, temp testing should be designed to show the dog's training needs so people can work with the dog on those needs. Temp testing should not be treated as a pass/fail concept where any dog that "fails" is killed....and certainly dogs that show the behavior of the dog in the video above should not be "failed" and certainly not "killed".

It is a shame when the shelter system fails the dogs it was created to save. So please voice your support for Dusty...and stop Dusty, and dogs like her, from being needlessly killed in shelters.

Updated:

Here is a link to the backstory behind the dogs in question, who were "rescued" from an alleged dog fighting ring only to be unjustly sentenced to death by their "rescuers" - -the backstory is from the Buster Foundation.

Bad Rap discusses behavior evaluations at their best, and at their worst - -and some good thoughts on how dogs from these situations SHOULD be judged on their evaluations.

The Monroe Daily news has now picked up the story -- unfortnately, without the video footage, it is simply a he said/she said situation. The video really is the damning evidence here.